How to view hidden users, add & delete?

Hi Peter, and a warm welcome to the forums! 🙂

Hide Accounts in the Login Window...

http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/hide-accounts-in-mac-os-x-tiger-login-wi ndow.html

(Upon restart, defaults back.)

Shouldn't be, something is wrong... did you try trashing that file, rebooting and doing it again?

I'm not sure. But are you sure that you actually need to log in to the admin account on a regular basis? Nearly all admin and even root tasks can be done from a non-admin account by authenticating with an admin username and password when prompted. I do admin and root tasks this way all the time from my non-admin account. It has been months since I needed to actually log in to my admin account. Might this work for you?

For now, I used a Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist file that has a "HideAdminUsers" command in it, and used it by simply replacing the standard com.apple.loginwindow.plist file that displays all users. Conversely, I switched them back when the task was done.

It sounds as if you used this command to modify the .plist file:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HideAdminUsers -boolean Yes

As an aside, it can be reversed with

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HideAdminUsers -boolean No

I don't think there is a keystroke to show the hidden admin usernames, but you can log into a hidden admin account with just a few more keystrokes. At the login screen, press the down-arrow to highlight one of the non-admin accounts, then hold down the option key and press Return. At the next window, enter your admin username (the shortname is fine) and enter your admin password. If there is only one non-admin account in the login window, then click the back button before pressing the down-arrow key.

Great, glad it worked! 🙂